It's been a rather long time since I posted a new newsletter, as I have been rather busy with some other projects and activities. My time has been rather limited, as you can probably tell by the lack of content being posted to the newsletters. Don't worry, I'll be posting a little bit about a few of the things I've been working on. Wait no longer for the current issue of TechDiminsion.com's Editorials and Opinions newsletter. On with my discussion about some open source media center options.

If you are looking to use a computer as a media center, whether it uses a 15 inch computer monitor as a display or a 72 inch high definition plasma television, it's not difficult to do. Here, I have some tips for doing so on Linux and in Windows. I'll start with Linux. Of course, I'll be starting with Mythbuntu. It is an all-in-one media center distribution based on Ubuntu, which uses MythTV as its media center application. For the desktop, it has the lightweight XFCE with nearly everything desktop related removed. It's a media center after all, so there's not much need for an office suite, email client, and other various applications. Mythbuntu offers a chance during installation for various remote controls and even video drivers. If you want to keep it safe, you can stick with the default open source drivers, but it has ATI and Nvidia drivers available right on the disk. Once you have it installed, there's a considerable amount of setup and options available to you. Some of the setup is not required, but can be handy depending on what types of actions you need your media center to accomplish. One such configuration would be the channel listings, which requires a subscription fee. This is only needed if you are using it as a set-top cable box/DVR. However, if you just want it to playback some movies that you have converted from your personal DVD collection to digital video files and video clips, or maybe a music collection, or even for picture slideshows, there's not a whole lot that needs to be done aside from telling the program where these files are located. However, if you do not have an active Internet connection to download movie covers, but you already have the image files available, you will have to set them yourself, which can be very tedious if you have a lot of movies in your collection that need these covers. As an open source project, Mythbuntu can be customized to your liking with themes, which there are several available in a default installation. Overall, Mythbuntu is a very stable and reliable media center option, but it does not come without its own flaws, such as the need to set movie covers manually. There is also an option available on the Mythbuntu website to add its features to an existing Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu installation.

Of course, there are other options available for Linux such as Freevo, Elisa, and XBMC (XBox Media Center). I have not personally had any luck with Elisa or XBMC, but many people have, and they swear by these applications.

Elisa and XBMC are also available for Windows for that matter. Again, I have not had much luck with them myself. That's not to say that you won't though, so the only thing I can say is that you can install them, try it out, and decide for yourself. On the other hand, I do have my own personal favorite open source media center application for Windows. That would be MediaPortal. A complete media center application created by Team MediaPortal, it is definitely my choice on a Windows platform. It has the same idea as Windows Media Center, and therefore, Mythbuntu. If you have a good codec pack installed for media support, such as the K-Lite codec pack, the rest about MediaPortal is easy and simple. Just install, tell it where your media is located, and run. However, once again, there is the difference between simple media playback and using it as a set-top cable box/DVR. If you are wanting to use it as a set-top box and such, you'll also have to install the TVServer, which comes with a few other requirements such as MySQL and so on, but it will automatically download and install all requirements for you. Once everything is installed and setup, the movie cover problem is an entirely different story than in Mythbuntu. All you need to do is have the image file in the same directory as the movie files with an identical filename as the video. So if you have something like "Movie Title [2004].avi" and then "Movie Title [2004].jpg in the same directory, you're set for blissful media library browsing. Also like Mythbuntu, MediaPortal can be customized with themes and choosing which plugins are enabled. Again, it does not come without its flaws, but that is the case for any type of software available, no matter who makes it.

Yes, there are several other options for an open source media center, but these are the major players in my book. They are the ones I use, and also the ones I recommend to others.

You can find an extensive list of media center software available at http://eirikso.com/2005/10/25/the-media-center-software-list/ but as a warning, I must say that not all of the listed options are free or open source. The list was started in 2005, but it does get updated fairly regularly thanks to users' comments.

Next up: Open source video tools to turn a DVD into digital media... the media for a media center.